For a number of years, pixelated display technology has been under development and many advances have been made in reducing the cost, the rigidity, the heat and the power consumption of such displays. In several cases, LCD display technology has advanced to the point where many portable computers now offer pixelated screens having a brightness, color and contrast that rival the display imaging capabilities of competing cathode ray tubes.
R&D efforts are currently leading to a new type of lightweight, durable and highly flexible material that can be used to produce what is being referred to as an ‘electronic reusable paper’ which will be provided by 3M Corporation within 1–2 years. The terms ‘ePaper’ and ‘eNewspaper’ are also gaining acceptance. The present invention utilizes any one or more highly flexible pixelated material of a type like that which has been, or is being, developed for ‘ePaper’ and ‘eNewspaper’—including such materials that are designed for color and video imaging—to form, or fabricate, such highly flexible material into wearable goods having a substantially contiguous imaging surface area. (For the sake of brevity the term ‘ePaper’ will be used to refer to this technology as it pertains to the present invention). Such ePaper innovations are expected to create ‘digital newspapers’ and ‘digital magazines’ printed on pages as flexible as newsprint and having an imaging capacity that will rival computer screens and the content of the Internet. IBM's Research Triangle Park has debuted the ‘eNewspaper’. Scientists at Xerox PARC, in partnership with 3M, have produced an electronic-paper prototype with the contrast and resolution of a printed page. Other efforts are under way by E Ink Inc., and by IBM, to develop a paperlike screen that will display information dynamically (ones that can be erased, rewritten and updated in real-time). PARC and 3M's approach is for black & white display material and uses an electrostatic charge to turn on or off the polarity of a multiplicity of tiny beads each having a black side and a white side (e.g. 200,000 per page). The beads flip and remain turned according to the polarity of electronic charge they receive—thus making a highly readable (and changeable) image. E Ink is developing flexible thin film transistor (TFT) pixelated display material in partnership with Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs.
Although effective LCD screens exist, they have nonetheless remained inappropriate for consideration in the fabrication of apparel for several reasons. For example, all laptop screens depend on a thin-film transistor (TFT), the technology behind every LCD display that switches pixels on and off. Traditionally TFTs are made by spreading amorphous silicon (a semiconductor) on a substrate of glass. However, the silicon on glass technology does not make for a very flexible material. Plastic, which is flexible, would be melted by the 680-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures needed to process the amorphous silicon. Thus, a lack of LCD flexibility sufficient to accommodate the curves associated with apparel, and such high LCD temperatures, as well as its weight, bulk and cost, are some of the significant factors which have prohibited the inclusion of LCDs into the design and fabrication of apparel, garments and other wearable goods.
Recently however, a great deal of R&D is occurring to make cool, highly flexible and lightweight pixelated materials that can be electronically controlled at much lower temperatures (which also means lower power consumption). For example, Lucent has announced a material called ‘alpha-6T’ that conducts electricity as efficiently as amorphous silicon, but can be processed at room temperature. Lucent plans to have a working prototype of its flexible TFT by Q4 2000. IBM is combining a flexible TFT similar to Lucent's technology with a ‘digital paper’ made of organic LED (‘oLED’). The technology is composed of organic polymer and fluorescent dye layers less than 0.2 microns thick, sandwiched between two electrodes (the top one is transparent). A steady current from the electrodes excites the polymer molecules, causing them to emit a pure, flicker-free light. With a viewing angle of 160 degrees, oLEDs are as readable as paper. The oLED approach has several advantages: the organic materials can be deposited easily on a surface of any size; oLED screens use about half the power of an equivalent active-matrix LCD; and, each pixel is composed of three ‘subpixels’ that deliver true RGB color at better than 200-dpi resolution. Kodak, which pioneered the oLED technology also plans to release ‘foldable-as-paper’ oLED material. IBM is also developing another technology out of their Thomas J. Watson Research Lab where researchers are combining polymers with inorganic materials, purifying the mixture, and in a sterile environment, depositing it onto a plastic substrate. The result is an organic/inorganic compound that can be applied to plastic in a liquid form at room temperature. The liquid evaporates and then the inorganic and organic materials self-assemble, alternating layers, to form perovskite—a crystal with the properties of a semiconductor. The result is TFTs that are easy to manufacture in any size and for less than one-tenth the production cost of a silicon-based TFT.
As numerous companies begin to provide pixelated materials that are as flexible or as ‘foldable’ as paper, and offer the immersive quality of constantly streaming information (or other dynamic imagery such as that seen on the Internet or on television), the prospect of employing such materials—that will also be lightweight and thermally comfortable when worn as visually dynamic apparel—can practicably be achieved. It is the purpose of the present invention to provide methods of making lightweight and wearable apparel out of thermally comfortable, highly flexible pixelated-material, and in so doing, to provide visually-dynamic clothing and goods that can be erased, rewritten and ‘upgraded’ in either in real-time or by pre-programming their appearance ahead of time, and preferably include the capability to image digital video onto the apparel and/or onto shapes typical of apparel segments and/or apparel components. Such visually-dynamic apparel will not only offer the ability to image virtually any fabric or textile appearance, but virtually any appearance imaginable whether static in appearance, or periodically changing, or constantly changing e.g. video playback of any film, animated, photographed, video, computer-generated (or otherwise digitized) media content. Such versatility of apparel appearance is ideal for entertainment costumes and stage productions, and can also be employed as an advertising, or promotional, or cross-promotional exhibiting means.
It is also a purpose of the present invention to provide practical methods for adjoining such highly flexible pixelated material to itself, or to other like material, to form wearable video-imaging apparel. Another purpose of the present invention is to overcome the shortcomings and deficiencies in previous attempts to create apparel out of pixelated material having too much rigidity, or too difficult to dependably join to itself or to other pieces of like material in an aesthetic manner, or too heavy, or too bulky, or too hot to be considered thermally-intolerable or thermally-uncomfortable, or too energy-consuming, or not economically viable for production of a variety of shapes (such as the shapes of apparel pattern segments that make up common wearable attire and goods). By contrast, the present invention discloses practicable methods for adjoining any one or more of a variety of flexible pixelated material shapes and/or apparel pattern segments and electronically couples such shapes and/or segments to receive displayable content for pixelated materials, and overcomes the limitations described above.